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DENVER

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We now have radar on U.S. borders, in Alaska and in Labrador, hut Russian planes from bases shown at top of map c~uld attack by sea routes or through central Canada (red-tinted area). Plans call for two more radar nets-Alaska-Greenland, Alaska-Labrador­with seaward flanks covered by airborne radar patrols 32

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33

RUSSIAN PLANES Are Raiding Canadian Skies

C• II,,.,.~ IIBy WTIJLILTIAM Ao lUlLJWAN 1 ~ ·ccr :rs

They sneak in almost daily, our northern outposts report. And now that Russia has the

H-bomh we're wide. open to attack. What's being done about it? The author, seeking

the answer, visited installations so secret he can't say he's seen them, flew thousands of

miles-and saw the Red intruders himself. We are building a defense. Here's the story

UTSIDE, the arctic summer day was crisp and clear; the waters of Bering Strait shone dully in the distance. Inside the big alert

hangar of the jet-fighter interceptor squadron the atmosphere was deceptively casual. There were 13 of us gathered in the fliers' hot room: six pilots,

_ six flying radar officers and myself, a reporter seek­ing the most critical story of our time-the story of America's present line of defense against Ma­lenkov's H-bomb.

We were sitting around playing poker, but we were dressed in dark-blue high-altitude pressure suits, ready for any emergency. And suddenly, as we sat there, it came: the blast of the scramble horn. A captain sitting across the table hurriedly scraped back his chair, beckoned to me and ran out the door.

One of our big radar stations on the west coast of Alaska had picked up the blip of an unidenti­fied plane on its radarscope-almost certainly a Russian.

Almost every day, at least one unidentified air­plane ·violates our continental borders. "They come in a( all times and places," a general in the Alaskan Air Command had t.old me, "and some have even penetrated deep into north central Can­ada." Teddy Roosevelt would have called this a shooting war.

To the pilots at our advance interceptor bases, it's not a shooting war-yet. They call the Red reconnaissance planes "spoofs"; their mission ap­parently is to feel out our radar defenses and pho­tograph our coasts, and when our jets go out to meet them, they run. But someday maybe the Red plane will be a real "bogey"-a Russian who doesn't run-and the pilots whose job it is to chase them off never know that this won't be the day.

They hope the day never comes. That first bogey probably will be accompanied by hundreds more, headed for the United States and carrying what our pilots sardonically calJ The People's Bomb for Peace and Plenty-the hydrogen bomb, Russian version.

My pilot and I charged down the hangar stairs onto the ramp, and hurried into our Mae Wests, complete with a tricky new pocketful of survival gadgets. Next came the parachutes with an at­tached collapsible dinghy for a seat cushion, then the big plastic helmets with earphones, micro­phone, oxygen mask, glareproof visor-ev'erything built in, I thought, except the brains.

In adjacent hangars, the crews of the other two

planes making the interception were racing to complete their own preparations.

The ground crew silently and swiftly strapped us into the plane's ejection seats, connected the oxygen hoses and leaped away. We were already moving; a jet needs no warmup. The hydraulically powered canopy snapped down over us and locked.

"Tower to Air Force Jet 994. Cleared for imme­diate take-off!" It was' just 2 minutes, 40 seconds since the horn had first blown. My pilot cut in the afterburner, a jet plane device which instantly in­creases power thrust by 50 per cent. We sped off the field, banked sharply, then began to climb at top speed to 43,000 feet. By now the operators at the radar control center had taken over our three­plane flight, steering us by .voice direction toward the blip on their scope.

Minutes later, we spotted the distant gleam of a Russian reconnaissance plane, speeding back to­ward its Siberian base. "There he goes," said the pilot. "Always the same story. Let's go home." . We went into a turning dive and headed back for the penny-ante game. The room smelled of fresh coffee and stale smoke as we walked in. The other pilots hardly looked up. The captain returned to his seat, picked up his cards and frowned. · "An­other of the same," he said. "No sweat."

I could sense his frustration, but I couldn't share it. For me the flight had been both exciting and frightening. I kept thinking: What if that had been many planes instead of just one-,-planes which didn't turn tail, but kept coming, bound for the States? What did we have to stop at least one of those planes, loaded with a hydrogen bomb, from shattering one of our cities?

The answer, I knew by now, was-not enough. For weeks, I had been on a journalistic survey

for Collier's, trying to find the answer to these questions: Can we defend ourselves now against a massive sneak air raid intended to knock us out in a single blow? If not now, when? Just what are the details of our defenses against the new Soviet H-bomb?

In the course of my assignment, I flew thou­sands of miles in all kinds of jet aircraft from all the edges of our continent. I talked at length with the best military and scientific brains in this coun­try and Canada. I visited the headquarters of our Air Defense Command at Colorado Springs and of the Air Research .and Development Command · at Baltimore. I have been inside installations where -despite my top-level clearance by the Pentagon-

MAP BY JO KOTULA

In radar control cen~er today, ma~s of data is written backward on transparent board so the officers in front can read it. This method­clumsy, complicated and (due to confusion) potentially dangerous-has been made obsolete by development of a new electronic computer

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34

LEW MERRtM

Brig. Gen. J. W. McCauley (left, with Maj. M. P. Alger) heads air defense of east central U.S., where one third nation's wealth, one fourth its people could he destroyed by nine H-bomhs

some of the equipment was concealed from my • The big gap in our defenses once the radar nets eyes. I have even been permitted to enter plac.es I are operating will be fighter planes; We have inter-can never admit I've seen, and have spoken to men · ceptors in northeijstern Canada and in Alaska; in I must not identify. between and on both flanks there are holes-the

Here's what I found: Russians could drive a whole fleet of aerial trucks • We have a partial radar fence along the U.S.- through. Canadian border, but it's too wide-spaced, too Obviously, radar nets and fighter protection complex and too close to home-"a fence," said alike require the same friendly and vigorous co-one officer grimly, "with no wire strung between operation from Canada that the United States has

the Washington-New York-Pittsburgh target area. That's 4,200 miles. From the Russian base at Franz Josef Land, it's only 3,800 miles; from Severnaya Zemlya, 3,875 miles; from the Taymyr Peninsula and Novo Sibirskiye Ostrova Zemlya Islands straight across the pole, 4,500 miles; from Wrangel Island and various points along the Ber­ing Strait or the Chukotski Peninsula, 4,000 to 4,500 miles." From the very positions of these air bases, w_e know that the Russians can mean· to use them only to attack us. ,

Do they have the planes to do the job? The Soviet air force is known to have hundreds,

perhaps thousands, of the TU-4, a copy of our B-29, which carried the first atomic bombs to Japan. Fanning out from Murmansk and the Chukotski Peninsula, TU-4s could bomb any point in the U.S. except Florida, and still have fuel for an additional 500 miles of flight. Besides the TU-4, the Russians have a new Type 31 turbojet bomber-similar to our B-36 and presumed to carry at least five tons of bomb loa"d at more than 450 miles an hour for at least 5,000 miles.

Should the Reds use either of these planes, they might not get home, but it would scarcely matter­even to the pilots. They could crash land or bail out and permit themselves to be taken prisoner­secure _in the knowledge that if a surprise attack came off as planned, the United States would be out of the war almost before it started. A success­ful one-way knockout raid, sacrificing perhaps the majority of 400 or 500 planes, could kill as many as 35,000,000 Americans and destroy the U.S. as a world power.

Besides the Type 31 and the TU-4, the Russians have developed a light, fast bomber like the B-57 we recently announced. It could carry an atomic or thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb, but 'by itself it could never fly .the 4,000 miles or so from Rus­sia to the nearest important American target. Does that mean we're ignoring it as a possible participant in a surprise attack? Not by a long shot.

the posts." Our border radar won't warn us of always received in the past. But Canada-al- Comment on the New Red Plane attack soon enough; onrushing bombers would though its dilemma today is much like that of a

· reach some of their targets almost as fast as the person handcuffed to a man who has been publicly In an Air Force installation, I stood talking to a warning of their approach. At best, the inhabit- threatened with assassination-,-has reason to look top scientist and a uniformed Air Force officer ants of our large Northern cities might have barely. searchingly at any proposals for joint action put about the new Red plane. "The Russkies could do time to run for the cellar-and the cellar is no de- forward by the United States. Our past record has this," said the scientist. "They could put a big fense against the H-bomb. not been entirely consistent-and a Canadian offi- TU-4 into the air, then send up two of the new • Next year we may be better off. A more effec- cer I spoke to indicated why. light jet bombers to join it. The two jets could

,~-~---~tive·raaar lin-el.Sbem-g:·pushed-ancnest-stationflfr'e~- -· -''Lo-ok here~"-he said, ·"I"believe-we'<lb'e-gla-a-t1Y -- hook-onto-the~Tl;:J~4's wing-tips, tilting-their-own------being constructed in the Far North; if the first units let you build a couple of bases in the north-central wings to maintain the best possible flight charac-work, we probably will have a warning net froni tundra-,but would you man them and keep them teristics, then cut their own fuel-swilling engines Alaska to Greenland by the summer of 1954. It manned even after a change in political administra- and hitchhike almost all the way to the target on will give us from four to six hours' warning of any tions? Would you send in enough strength to keep the TU-4's power plant." air attack. . the Russians from paratrooping in one day and I expressed astonishment, and the Air Force offi-,e Sometime later-I'm not permitted to say when using the fields as bases against both of our coun- cer objected. "In _bad weather," he said, "all three -a second row of radar outposts may be strung tries? of 'em would crash." across Canada in the more easily accessible _terri- "We can't afford to build or man them. If you "Ah," said the scientist, "but the Russians would tory between our present border fence and the can, fine-but stick to your promises!" never launch the attack in bad weather in the first new net being built in the arctic. It will confirm One fact all the experts agree on: something place. And if the three planes ran into squalls en the first warning and indicate the actual direction must be done to strengthen our northern air de- route, they could simply unhook, make their way of attack. fense. system before Russia has an H-bomb pro- through the front separately, then reunite on the

Construction Depends on the Weather

The construction of these two northern radar nets depends on the vagaries of arctic weather, the uncertainty of Congressional appropriations and the strategical concepts of our new Joint Chiefs of Staff. The nets, together with our airborne radar at sea, would be tremendous steps forward-per­haps enough to make the difference between the survival and the utter destruction of our country as a major power. The two early-warning lines would be far less expensive than has been widely re~ ported elsewhere-less than a billion and a half dol­lars, compared with published estimates of between 20 and 150 billions. This whole concept of effective warning at low cost is made possible by two excit­ing new devices, never before publicly disclosed: a self-watching radarscope and a long-range radio transmitter capable of overcoming tb:e especially difficult communications problems of the arctic.

. Right now, our air-defense planners intend to build the two radar fences__..:._weather, Congress and the Joint Chiefs permitting.

duction line. If Soviet bombers could claw their other side. A radar operator trying to track them way through to our East Coast and. drop only would go crazy. What had looked like one big nine hydrogen bombs in a line from Boston to slow TU-4 would suddenly become one TU-4--Washington, they could blast out of existence a and two very fast jet bombers, breaking away in strip 50 miles wide and 450 miles long-a strip different directions for their own targets." containing one fourth the nation's population We stood silent a moment, then the scientist and one third of its wealth. grinned. "I got the Order of the Heroes of the

* * * The nerve center of our aerial defense today is

in Colorado· Springs, a quiet, year-round resort town less than five minutes from Denver by jet plane. There, in a modem four-story office build­ing surrounded by a high wire fence and heavily guarded by sentries, Brigadier General Kenneth P. Bergquist, deputy chief of staff for operations of the Air Defense Command, stood with me at a globe and detailed the story of what we are up against.

"Facing us across the polar flats is a crescent of Russian and Siberian air bases," he said, gesturing . "If you place a bit of string on the globe, starting at the shore of the Murmansk Peninsula, it will . curve over the arctic by the shortest route to

Soviet Union for that one," he said. Then he ex­plained: to test defense theories, he and his col­leagues try to foresee the most outlandish schemes the Russians might coine up with; for particularly nasty ideas, they "decorate" one another.

Virtually all the air-defense people I questioned about potential Soviet weapons discount the pos­sible use of intercontinental missiles~long-range, atomic versions of the German V-2. Among other reasons, they doubt that materials exist to build such missiles, at least for. another I 0 to 12 years. They are working on countermeasures just to be safe, but they feel certain that when and if the H-bomb is delivered, it will be carried by aircraft. known to us in fact or principle-planes we can destroy, provided we have early enough warning and sufficient defense forces. If Russia Were to

Collier's for October 16, 1953

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U.S. AIR FORCE PHOTO

Russia's basic carrier of atomic weapons is the TU-4, patterned on our B-29. From Arctic bases, it could fly one-way to any target in the U.S. outside Florida, with fuel to spare

U.S. AIR FOlt.CE PHOTO

One plan for defense against TU-4 is to make a long-distance fighter-inter~eptor of fast new B-57. It has enough range to fly far into Canada, enough speed to bedazzle Red bomber

attack tomorrow, what defenses do we have-right here and now?

We have excellent fighter-interceptors-but not enough of them.

We have highly modernized and efficient anti­aircraft defenses, now being beefed up by Nike guided missiles battalions-but again, there aren't enough of them.

We have a Ground Observer Corps (ably sup­ported by a like organization in Canada)-but it's badly understaffed.

We have an excellent civil and military com­municr.tions system-but it's inadequate for the tremendous load an all-out Russian attack would put on it. .

We have a partly completed perimeter of man­ually operated radar stations around the U.S., not only on our northern border,. but on the coasts as well.

But there are too .few of them, and they are tao complicated for efficiency and too close to our industrial centers to give sufficient warning. Their detecting impulses extend roughly 150 miles out to sea-only a few minutes' flying time, by jet -and, depending on terrain, about 100 miles into Canada. They extend as far again into the U.S., in order to allow continuous tracking of an invader. One arin of this radar perimeter now extends to Labrador.

We have additional so-called islands· of radar coverage deep inside the U.S., aroun<:t such prime target areas as Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Han­ford.

We have a couple of Navy radar picket ships­. still experimental· and limited in range.

We have an adjunct to our defense system, set up in recent months and called TOMCIS. (Test of Multiple Corridor Identification System). Under TOMCIS, the pilot of each incoming international airliner gets secret orders at his last port of call before heading for the U.S. The orders require him to fly a special pattern, always different, as he approaches this country. He must keep to that course. If our radar picks up a plane at the wrong place or tune, an interceptor goes up to look the stranger over-and to shoot him down, if need be, over the safe, far reaches of the sea. When the system first started there were about 200 intercep­tions of wandering airliners a month. Now that most commercial pilots are getting used to the method, the figure is down to about 30 a montb-but that's still too many. .

There's the picture of our air .defenses as they stand today-creaky, insufficient, agape with holes.

Moreover, there are weak spots which don't ap­pear on the surface. Our radar net, thin as it is, is rarely in full operation at all points, although it tries to keep a 24-hour watch on our borders.

All of its equipment is delicate and complicated, and at any given moment some components are out of action for maintenance or repair; neighbor­ing installations have to try to cover the gap.

There's a human problem, too--and it has been one of the biggest flaws in the system. · Radar has to be watched, and watchers grow weary and confused-weary in monotonous areas like the Far North, where one blip on a radarscope is considered heavy traffic, confused in busy areas like the northeastern United States, where there's often too much happening for a single brain to fig­ure it out.

I saw it work both ways. At the Alaskan fighter-interceptor outpost where

·1 observed the Russian reconnaissance-plane chase, I spent some time in the radome, standing behind a thin young officer hunched over a radarscope. He was watching the progress of a blip already identi­fied as the plane of a low-flying bush pilot. The offi­cer kept passing a band over his eyes. "Watching these damn' scopes gets your eyes after about 30 minutes," he told me. "You lose your acuity." He looked weary, and welcomed another officer's offer to spell him ..

Science of Radar Control Operation

Now look in, as I did, on a typical aircraft c~n­trol and warning radar station in the U.S. proper. It was a dimly lighted, busy place_:.an amphi­theater of radarscopes, with the center of the stage occupied by a big, vertical, transparent Plexiglas map, or plotting board. Behind the board stood two airmen and a W AF wearing earphones. As information poured in on the various scopes in front-some set for 10 miles, others for as much as 150 miles-it was telephoned to the three plot­ters. They lettered the information on the board in reverse, so that it could be read from the other side by the scope watchers in the front of the theater.

The mood of the room was tense; the men at the radarscopes kept staring up at the big board, their foreheads wrinkled, their lips tight. ("This," said a stocky little scientist standing near me, "is man's new attitude-:-to look toward heaven, his eyes clouded with doubt and fear.") There was reason for the tension.

Suppose a blip appears in one position on a radarscope-and information then comes in from

.',.,.. "'anotbentation· irrdicating~anoth·er plane·in-tlfe same­area. ·

Are. there actually two planes, or just one? The difference in the angle of vision of the two scan­ning stations, perhaps 50 miles apart, could give the misleading impression that there are two planes when actually there's only one, but the watcher has to be sure. And the only way to be sure is to do a fairly complicated calculation. Now multiply that situation by the 30 or more tracks on the big Plexiglas board, and imagine the pos­sible confusion.

Scores of time-consuming, brain-wearying mul­tiple calculations beset our large aircraft and warning radar stations every day. Mental exhaus­tion is a constant hazard. When it overtakes our watchers ...

That is the moment when time-and the Soviet -could overtake us.

• • • For more than three years, from late 1946 to

mid-1950, almos.t nothing was done to improve our continental defenses. We lived in a kind of heedless complacency, convinced that a cut-rate defensive system would serve the purpose. Then came Korea_:and the nation awoke to the chilling fact that it takes guns to stop aggression. Beyond our vulnerable border with Canada there were no guns, nor even warning devices to set off the alarm in case of attack.

Our military men, given a go-ahead.at last, be­gan to seek out a method of getting the most pro­tection in the quickest time and at the smallest cost.

They came up with two alternatives. First, we could strengthen and extend our bor-

Collier's for October 16, 1953

der radar to provide continuous tracking of any attacking bombers as they approached the conti­nental United States; our fighter-interceptors and antiaircraft would then know the precise location and direction of enemy bombers, once the radar had picked them up. That would give a certain de­gree of protection, but not much warning in terms of time.

Or second, we could set up a new radar-alarm system, constructed far enough from United States borders (and targets) to give us the earliest possi­ble notice that an attack was on the way. That wouldn't offer the same opportunity to pinpoint the location of an enemy bomber as he headed south-but it would mean a quick, timely warn­ing, which might be the best protection in the long run.

E1Jectivene1111 of Radar Shown

Then the planners thought: Why not have both? Why not build gradually outward from our bor­ders in advancing perimeters, and also establish a warning fence in the Far North, the two radar projects ultimately meeting in mid~Canada?

With strengthened border radar, we could in-· crease the effectiveness of our home defenses. With the second step-known to military men as· a Distant Early Warning, or DEW, Line-we could insure ourselves against another Pearl Har­bor debacle.

We could get our strategic bombers--our coun­terpuncheN-into the air and safely dispersed,

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ready to launch an attack as quickly as possible. We could alert our civil-defense system, and give our­selves time to take cover and time to prepare for a fight-time to save the nation.

The amount of time? With one hour's warning, the Strategic Air Command could get no more than 10 per cent of its bombers off the ground and out of harm's way. Three hours would raise the figure to 50 per cent. But a six-hour advance no­tice would enable. virtually all the SAC's planes to disperse and launch a retaliatory strike. What's more, given that much time. our fighter planes could rally to attack the intruders; the existence of a Distant Early Warning Line could mean the de­struction of as many as 90 per cent of attacking enemy bombers before they could reach their tar­gets-compared with the 30 per cent figure cited in 1950 by General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, former Air Force Chief of Staff.

But before the six-hour DEW Line could be built, there were some problems to lick.

Obviously, no defensive system could operate at top efficiency where so much depended on human eyes and human brainll working under severe stress:

Also, a radar net in the Far North would cause a major communications headache. The best radio equipment then available was useless in the arctic for about four months out of every year because of polar magnetic storms; there had to be some way to get word from the northern DEW Line to the con­trol centers in the United States. Finally, costs had to be held to a minimum.

39

The task of making the DEW Line a practical project was assighed to the Air Research and De­velopment Command, a three-ring circus of mili­tary, scientific and industrial brains, directed by Major General Donald L. Putt from an old offic~ building in downtown Baltimore.

In 1950, ARDC l~t contracts for various parts of its research operation to the Rand Corporation, Associated Universities, Inc., Massachusetts Insti­tute of Technology, and various other colleges, laboratories and scientific centers around the coun­try. Their mission: "To perfect an automatic sys­tem for the collection, reporting and display of electronically digested intelligence (so it can) be channeled instantly to appropriate control and command centers where the early knowledge could be used for effective defense and counter­attack purposes."

"Automaticity" Latest Coined Word

The scientists coined a word for the solution to most of these problems. "Automaticity," a top sci­entist told me, "was the obvious answer. Man can still make the final decisions, but he's just not bright enough to compete with a machine, not quick enough to reduce the mathematical prob­lems of modern war to actions which have to be taken at supersonic speeds. And even if man could do the job," he added, "he lacks the stam­ina to keep it up."

By last year, the scientists had come through with two revolutionary devices whose develop-

TED GOODMAN, U!AP ·

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One of our border radar 11tation11. Search radar antenna is located under the dome at left, height-finder equipment on the tower at right Collier's for October 16, 1953

42

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AIR LINE COMPANIES

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Today a foe could fly safely almost to our border

ment marked the technological "break­through" the military men had hoped for. ·

"First," an ARDC official in Balti­more told me, "we had to devise a completely new method of sure arctic communication by radio. Cable was no good, because of shifting ice and other terrain and weather consider­ations-to say nothing of possible sabotage. Second, we needed a warn­ing· device on the radar sets to relieve men in arctic· stations of the brain­wearying job of staring endlessly at a blank scope."

Security still envelops both of the devices which solved these problems. But this much can be said:

The new radio transmitter sends messages well over 500 miles, and op­erates even more efficiently in the arctic than radio normally does in temperate zones. Instead of being knocked out of. commission one third of every year by magnetic storms, it will get through 99 per cent of the _ time, year-round. It requires only 40 kilowatts of power, easily produced by Diesel generators. With the new trans­mitter, our combat commands within the United States will get radar intelli­gence from the arctic within three min­utes after it's picked up by our outposts.

The new self-alerting ,radar is, in one respect at least, even 'more impor­tant. In essence, it's a radar set with a bell which rings whenever the scope picks up a signal (that sounds simple, but it took months of patient research to hook the visual radar to the audible bell). Now the radar will not have to be watched constantly. As a result, there will be far less strain on the men assigned to our radar outposts.

But the great significance of'the new radar device is that it will bring about a truly astonishing saving in man power-10 men to a station, instead of

-the 300 once anticipated, an-over-all· r~duction of perhaps 15,000 airmen and many millions of dollars.

.today, with the last theoretical hur­dles cleared, Western Electric has started work, under a $20,000,000 contract, on a test leg of our arctic DEW Line: a few ten-man radar sta­tions extending eastward in a 180-mile arc from Barter Island, off the north­ern Alaskan coast. Eventually, the arc will push farther and farther along the net parallel until it reaches Green­land, 2,000 miles away.

A husky engineer who had just flown back from the area told me: ''We had

to take up every nail, board and \Vire, every ounce of fuel and scrap of food, from Seattle and Portland, so we could get the building done during the short arctic summer." A huge supply con­voy, including everything from Lib­erty Ships to LSTs, passed through Bering Strait in July-uncioubtedly giving Russian radar operators a nasty few hours before it turned away from the Siberian coast and headed no'fth• east toward Point Barrow.

In addition to the new manned ra­dar stations, Western Electric is con­structing several other stations which comprise a new wonder weapon in themselves: they are unmanned, and will do their reporting automatically.

These additional statio'ns are needed because the manned stations are to be built about 100 miles apart, on an av­erage--close enough so that their search beams overlap, but so far apart that enemy. bombers could sneak through under the converging beams, or by ducking behind mountain ranges which are effective hiding places from radar. The unmanned radar sets will fill the gaps.

Duties of DEW Line

Precisely what will the DEW Line do? It will simply alert officials in the

United States to the presence of enemy planes. It won't be able to pinpoint their position, it won't be able to sup­ply much information about them­but it will provide this much vital in­formation: a warning that the planes are coming, and some indication of their number. As one Bell Telephone Laboratories engineer is said to have put it: "You'll knq,w the planes are there-one, two, many ... or jeepers creepers!"

When finished, the arctic DEW Line will consist of a string of manned sta­tions, -complete~ with- arctic gap fillers and an all-season communications sys­tem to the interior of the United States.

"But," said another holder of the Order of the Heroes of the Soviet Un­ion, "what if the arctic DEW Line is penetrated? At best, we can track an

, intruder 80 or 100 miles-the range of our radar-then we lose him in the wil­derness. Washington and Ottawa will know only that someone has crossed the arctic headed south, probably with evil intent, else he'd have filed a flight plan and come in like anyone else in­stead of skulking through. Once· he's

well past our northern radar stations no one will have any idea where he is or where he's going until he's breathing down our necks.

"And that's why we've suggested the construction of a second DEW Line, down around the 65th parallel, or about 500 miles south of the first one." . In Baltimore, a general also spoke to

me about the radar fence the experts are already calling DEW Line II. "It would begin to give us something really good in, early warning," he said ear­nestly. ''We could plot the course of an intruder crossing two lines. That would prove definitely that'he was dan­gerous-and, more important, it would give us his course, so we could prepare our combat defenses."

DEW Line II, lower down on the expanding face of the globe, would re­quire more . stations, running from Alaska across Hudson Bay to Labra­dor.

Besides the two DEW 'Lines, our early warning system undoubtedly will be extended over our exposed sea flanks, using radar-equipped Super Constellations--covering the Atlantic from Newfoundland to the Azores, the Pacific from Alaska to Hawaii. Without this flank protection, our whole air-defense system would be wide open to end runs, making the DEW Lines virtually useless.

Finally, U.S. · military experts are hoping to improve radar defenses within the United States-around the borders and around large cities and vital defense installations. These so­called radar islands are already in ex­istence, but they suffer from the usual radar shortcoming: there are poten­tially dangerous gaps under their beams and behind mountains and other ter­rain features. Now scientists, working closely with the Air Force, have sug­gested plugging these holes with small unmanned-gap fillers, perhaps -six-or-­ten to every large radar.

But increasing the number of radar installations creates new problems. Re­member the aircraft control and warn­ing radar station in the United States, and the strained faces of the watchers trying to keep track of dozens of radar reports at once? What will happen to those men if the number of radar re­ports is greatly inc;reased-if, instead of having to make sense of multiple re­ports from only one big radarscope, they're forced to keep track of eight or ten more besides?

Once more science came through

Curvature of earth causes holes in radar defense under overlapping beams, making it possible for attacking planes to slip past undetected. Solution is to put auiomatic radar gap-fillers between manned sta~ions

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44

Wnere .. happy endings s+an-

· Isn't this Just the ticket for a happy ending? Going Pullman-you end up the way you begin-at a business-like hour in the center of town.

Next titne you go-

Take it easy

Go PuttMAN COMFORTABLE, CONVENIENT AND SAFE

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C•n't our radar· be attacked? Yes

with a brilliant solution: an adaptation of the high-speed electronic computer, the ultimate in automaticity.

Not only will the new computer eval­uate any number of ·radar reports-it also will take into consideration every other possible pertinent fact: ground­observer reports, the weather, flight plans and so on. No longer will men and women have to scrawl radar tracks painstakingly (and backward) on transparent boards. No longer will the watchers knit their brows over the results.

Here's what will happen instead: At any one of the Air Force's big

combat centers, a team of officer spe­cialists will sit in front of big individual radar consoles, each equipped with rows of buttons and switches so the watcher can call up precisely the infor­mation he wants. When a tracker thinks he has an actual intruder, he'll buck the radar picture along to the identification officer's screen, while the electronic computer busily figures out the mystery plane's speed, position, heading and the like. The identifi­cation officer will call on the computer for civilian and military flight plans, ground observer reports, everything he needs to make a prompt identifica­tion; it has a "memory" for such matters and will supply them _on request.

If the blip on the identi­fication officer's radar screen remains a mystery, he swiftly passes the pic-ture to the boss, the sector

ties everything else together and makes it work.

But one vital component is still miss­ing. A warning of impending attack is all very we!J-but it doesn't provide protection. That is the job of the fighter aircraft, guided missiles and antiaircraft guns.

• • • A Russian bomber which ap­

proached the United States through central Canada today, or via the East or West Coasts, would not only go un­detected until it was almost at our borders-it would go unattacked as well. Even if the two DEW Lines were already in operation, there wouldn't be a fighter plane for miles around­until · the enemy was virtually within striking distance of United States ter­ritory.

We have fighter-interceptor bases in

"It's just about time you turned over an old leaf!" commander (probably a

brigadier general), who sits with the weapons as-

COLLIER'S CHARLES SKILES

signer. They study the blip -- -~then-· do· the job~ tnar--ncr-machine, -·· easrern'CafiaCla,~ mainly inLabiador, ·­

however efficient, can do: exercise in- and in the west in Alaska. In between telligent judgment. there's a deep pocket, aimed straight

The weapons assigner transfers the at the heart of our nation. Why is it still-unidentified picture quickly to the there? interceptor officer, who is in touch with Partly for the same reason we don't

·a nearby air base. He then orders a have a complete radar-warning system scramble. today-because of the years between

As the single jet takes off to inves- World War II and Korea in which we tigate, the interceptor officer tells the did little or nothing to prepare our pilot where he'll find the intruder, read- . continental defenses. ing off information supplied by the Whether we will be able to meet the computer (in the not too distant future, deficiency in our :fighter defense de­the computer will be able to pass its in- pends largely on whether the planes

. formation directly to· the pilot; he will are made available in time-and that, read the course, altitude and position of in tum, depends on budgetary and the stranger from dials in his cockpit). policy considerations.

Antiaircraft Is Made Ready Meanwhile~ Air Force officials are

making additional plans. One sugges­tion under consideration is that we

Meanwhile, the weapons assigner develop heavy patrol fighters-or has flipped a second switch, and the modify some of our new B-57s, pat­blip appears before still another man, . terned after the British Canberra the antiaircraft liaison officer; who sits . fighter bomber-and set them patrol­ready to bring into play all the antiair- ling in overlapping arcs across the bor­craft guns and rockets in the area if the der. They would have enough range to interceptor attacks and misses, or is fly deep into Canada-about as far as shot down. DEW Line II-and enough speed to

From the time an enemy plane is make them a real threat to the rela­first sighted on the radarscopes to the tively slow-flying TU-4, which will moment it's brought under fire, only a· probably be Russia's principal long­few minutes have elapsed-and in the distance bomber for some time to bustling combat centers, the officers on come. whom the nation's very existence may These multiengine jet fighters could depend are still fresh and clear-eyed, harass enemy bombers all the way re!idY for anything. south, calling for help en route from

In a very real sense, the new elec- short-range interceptors .. tronic computer is the key to the whole The experts are also counting on an­early-warning setup--the device that other development to help turn back

Collier's for October 16, 1953

REF ID:A39483

• .. J-,, .

.

but that's all the alarm we'll need

enemy squadrons: air-to-air rockets, launched by radar-electronic fire-con­trol systems which woUld provide a pat­tern almost impossible to evade. They may eventually be armed with atomic warheads, and they certainly will have proximity fuses which will cause them to explode at precisely the right mo­m(jnt. Security won't permit any fur­ther description of these missiles, but their possibilities are obvious.

Something must be done, and our officials are well aware of it. Warning is no good without protection. , Their aim .is to have the protection ready­in some form-by the time our DEW Lines go into operation.

* * * What will it all cost? Manned radar,·

gap fillers, long-distance radios, self­reading radarscopes, complicated elec­tronic gadgets . . . won't they be tremendously expensive?

Here are' the figures, as nearly ac­curate as they can be right now-the first realistic estimates ever published of the expected hardware price of our planned radar-warning system (not in­cluding maintenance or operating costs):

For DEW Line I: $45,000,000. For the longer DEW Line II: $75,-

000,000. For ex~ending our sea-appr9ach

warning lille: $450,000,000. For strengthening our border radar:

$15,000,000. For several hundred gap fillers: $60,-

000,000. ' For 30 electronic computers: $180,-

000,000; for phone lines, office equip­ment, buildings, etc.: $500,000,000.

The total: $1,325,000,000. In addition, some $518,000,000 al­

ready has been spent on the present radar-warning system. It must be em­phasized that the grand total of $1,-,

/ ,84~,0QO,OOQ in money spent or to be · ·spent buys the U.S. vitally needed

warning and combat tracking ability, but no defensive weapons to do the fighting. i

The one and one-third billion dollars

:i

still to be spent is a lot of money. But it's not 150 billion dollars, the figure that some people have reckoned as the cost of radar warning. And it's insignificant when matched against the total defense budget for 1953-'54 of $34,372,000,000.

Most important, the money, in the estimate of our top scientists and mili­tary pla~ners, might pay for the sur­vival of the nation at a moment when nothing else is available. Although these vitally needed funds are no(yet in the budget, we can't afford not to spend the money.

Won't the whole early warning sys­tem be vulnerable to enemy attack? That's one of the points raised by critics of the plan, both within and outside the Air Force. One man told me, "The So­viet would probably try a three-phase attack: First, bomb out our radar in­telligence; second, shatter our strategic bombing bases, both at home and abroad; third, use· the H-bomb or atomic bombs on a dozen major cities, atomic plants and industries, then pro­ceed to demolish what's left in leisurely and economical fashion.

"Where would the DEW Lines be then ... ?"

One of the greatest brains in arctic radio communications, to whom I re­ported this criticism, replied sharply: "The day the Russians attack DEW, either by air or ground, that in itself will be actual war. The price for this advance warning is small compared with what that warning can save us.

"These DEW stations are not for­tresses! You could call them electronic versions of the old cavalry vedettes, the advance guards whose one job was to warn the main body. Sure, they might be lost in the early skirmishes-which is another good reason for keeping the number of men in each station to an operational minimum. Every one of thos,e men deserves the highest-" he stopped and angrily flipped away his cigarette. "Well, what more do you expect to buy in a world like this? We'll warn you-but we can't gliarantee you security, too!" · 4£::::..L::::..

COLLIER'S

"Well, now that it's completed, which one of us gets to be the pilot?" HERB GREEN

Collier's for October 16, 1953

45

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